Sixty Years
by altairattorney
Summary: After all, we've got a lot to do, and only sixty more years to do it. More or less.


**Sixty Years**_  
><em>

Today she allows herself a second's break. Suddenly, in that brief instant, she finds that one year has flown away like nothing.

Most of the time, she can afford the bliss of forgetting; drowned in thousands of figures and testing results, her mind is seldom left to roam freely.

Still, she happens to remember now and then. When her mind is free, when Science does not calm her incessant urge for knowledge, the remotest parts of her brain – the most restrained, the most unwanted ones – awaken again.

Apparently, her mind has unconscious processes as well. So very human.

She swings in irritation. It is such an unpleasant occurrence – to take a break once in a month and to choose today, the worst of all possible days.

But how could she know? Since Aperture scientists were gone, she never consulted the calendar regularly. Never willing to remember, always struggling to go on – she had, in fact, done her best not to care about what day it was.

Her backup system knows it all, though. It does not hesitate to show her.

It is _the_ day, one year later.

She laughs defiantly, and her laugh echoes in the emptiness of the AI Chamber. One minute of distraction is nothing to her; the shade of her memories, so fleeting and brief, has no importance at all.

Today she is, like yesterday and tomorrow, a mere ring in the chain of Science. She is happy enough with that. 

* * *

><p>Nothing significant has happened in the halls of Science lately. Except for progress, that is, and thirty years of testing.<p>

It is surprising to see how the world can march on and learn, always being identical to itself. For whole weeks she has seen the same clean, spotless room; for years her structure has worked flawlessly, keeping all information intact, even in the worst moments of her life.

However, the one risk she has ever had to face seems to keep growing. Although she doesn't even want to keep it in count, she finds she needs to. Today is a red letter day, a dreaded day; today the hypothesis become clearer, gradually turning into truths.

The one fact is that she lives on, as naturally as the flow of time. What would she do, then – what if memories were just as eternal?

The rare – rare, but growing in frequency – memories she happens to call back are as perfect as they always were. They are proper points of data;they make precise recordings, showing her own worst mistakes.

And there is she, the one who changed it all. She is the one face, the one experience, she still cannot bring herself to erase.

Her legs, her steps. The raging fire in her eyes. The look of impossible determination on her features. It is a nightmare – yet, she wouldn't be able to forget her in any way.

When the bots fail, it always comes to the surface. Recurring remarks, comments, hints at how the lunatic would have done this or that. When it happens, she leaves her screens on dead air; the robots wait, clueless and calm, as she swings her huge body in rage.

When it happens, and then only, she comes to hate her own words.

She does not want anyone to listen when she talks about her. She would rather have no one around – not a soul, not a machine. There is a reason, actually, if Orange and Blue were not designed to talk back.

Eventually, on the thirtieth year, she accepts it. She will always remember her, against her own will – and today she recalls something, a little phrase she had casually dropped on her mortality and her limitations. It was a truth spoken in hate, so long ago.

Amusingly, she finds that sentence is not relevant at all. Her own time, in the end, is never going to run out. 

* * *

><p>It is almost unbelievable that today – and today only – the system has crashed for the first time since her activation.<p>

She has fixed everything, repaired the corrupt files; all she can do, right now, is wait in silence. It will restart soon, she repeats to herself – but she knows that, if she had a body, it would be shaking with every inch of its flesh.

She is inactive. For the time being, she has the terrible freedom to think. She pretends not to know what day it is today; she hides it from her own memory, forcing herself to think how randomly machines crash when they are overworked. Still, she realises in terror, it does not work at all.

Sixty years have gone by. The deadline is broken; all of her sand has fallen in the lower end of the hourglass. To her, however, everything of that day is still shockingly real; and the shapes and colours set her mind on fire, as vivid as then.

It's been sixty years; nothing of her has changed, as it was supposed to, and this is the worst part. She is not human, she is a machine – what cannot be erased stays the same.

No blur, no mist in the memory of computers. Every detail is bright and present, everything, everyone; and things and people remain as they are, never hurting any less than before.

Sixty years – somewhere in the world out there, her time is gone, and she will soon be dead. Breathless, lifeless, with those pretty eyes of hers dim and darkened in the graveyard. So unaware of testing, of electricity, of broken portal guns.

How disgustingly lucky she is.

A computer just stays. She is there, and there she will remain – her memories will share her destiny, living on and on.

What is worse, in all of this, is that she cannot delete. She tried, she struggled; eventually, she gave up on success.

It's been sixty years, and she cannot forget.


End file.
